Each workday for the past five months, ICU nurse Kelly Anaas has run the same painstaking drill:
Drive to Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Grab work shoes from car trunk. Put on cloth mask and rub on hand sanitizer. Enter Intensive Care Unit and change to surgical mask. If caring for a patient in isolation, don N100 respirator mask and goggles.
After finishing a 12-hour shift, scrub down with baby wipes and swap to cloth mask. Return to car and put shoes back in trunk before driving home. Once there, strip off scrubs on front porch and stuff them into separate laundry bag. Shower. Hug daughter, hold baby boy.
It has been this way since COVID-19 first hit Minnesota in late March, a stretch of months during which Anaas' emotions have morphed from fear of the unknown to an unwavering determination to keep herself, her family and the public safe.
"I wouldn't say [the fear] has gone away. We all just kind of adjusted — kind of like learning to live with it, learning to continue our normal lives alongside it," Anaas said. "It's exhausting. And nursing is exhausting enough as it is."
That persistence is fueled by sobering statistics — five months in, nearly 75,000 Minnesotans have contracted COVID-19, more than 6,400 have been hospitalized and 1,814 have died. From firefighters to janitors, bus drivers to grocery store clerks, those on the front lines of the coronavirus fight wage a wearying and unending battle to safely do their jobs without the refuge of working from home. While others around them have grown COVID-fatigued, they work to stay vigilant.
Eiluj Starr Ringle admits it can be trying. Over the many months, she's grown weary of the customers at Linden Hills Co-op in Minneapolis, where she works three days a week as a cashier, complaining about being asked to wear a mask. And she's tired of the patrons at her mom and dad's Walker, Minn., bar and grill, where she pulls waitress shifts a few times a week, refusing to tip her because they don't like her wearing a mask.
"I had a woman [at the co-op] come in with a mesh mask on; my manager asked her to leave. Another customer refused to mask up and refused to leave [the store] for several hours," she said. "The anger is an everyday thing."